Brammo attracts $12.5 million in investment, millions in pre-orders

Brammo Inc., having announced the game-changing Empulse electric motorcycle and a giant global manufacturing partner, seems to have become something of a money magnet – pulling in $12.5 million towards a $30 million Series B round of financing from a handful of investors. Besides further funding from existing stakeholders Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital and Best Buy Capital, the brand's bold plan to go big has also caught the eye of an Oklahoma-based oil and gas exploration company called Alpine Inc. as well as one other financier who, apparently, prefers to remain anonymous at this time.

In addition to that funding, they've got pre-orders for over $6 million worth of product and its thought that figure could double before Christmas if demand stays steady. Things are looking so good, in fact, they even expect to start turning a profit next year.

So, is the next big move an IPO (Initial Public Offering)? That seems to be a distinct possibility. Referring to his company as the "antithesis of Tesla", CEO Craig Bramscher said that whereas that electric vehicle maker received commitments of more than $1 billion in equity and federal loans before going public, "we'll do it for under $100 million." Now, it's true that the capital needs of such fundamentally different product lines are contradistinctive, but it still sounds to us like he means business.

All this activity also means they are quickly outgrowing their present location. Bramscher has just let it be known they are building a new Ashland headquarters. In the first of a three-phase project, they plan to erect a 45,000 square foot building to house R&D, Administration and Marketing by next spring.

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Anonymous

Anonymous

4 Years Ago

@Dan - wrong on most counts (except for these women making we men drool).
Let's state some facts:
in 2006, fatalities for automobiles was about 20 per 100,000 drivers.
For motorcycles about 60.
While one can run around like a chicken with their head cut off claiming 3x rate, such behavior is unfounded since this number doesn't include:
a) the fatality rate is already a low %
b) there are many things we do in life that increase our chance of death by many, many factors - if one bothers to spend time finding actual data, instead of plastering wild claims with no data, you will find other socially acceptable tasks (e.g. riding a bicycle) are also quite dangerous. Shall we stop that, too?
c) we do b) because also not included in these stats are other variables - e.g. I am sure that, if one drew a histogram of fatality rates per driver or motorcycle driver binned to *number of prior accidents* ... one will see Darwin Awards are taking care of these accident prone folks, the smart folks dramatically improve their chances (by many factors) on any vehicle

Next, while a [generic] motorcycle has horrible Cd, it has smaller A and it's lightweight - the Empulse is a fine format for electrification.
One doesn't need to study electric motorycles to evaluate this: except for monsters like the Goldwing (which I classify as a car without sides, sorry Goldwing riders) - most ICE motorcycles easily trounce any ICE car in MPG. Electric versions also do quite well - fairing, or no.
Finally, this class of product will find itself on the street quite often - not highway - which means there's no reason to panic because of its naked style.

It is true, however - somewhat unfortunate - that a *lowered*, fully faired, rocket would be about 2x more efficient (sites' claims vary, it's too hard to measure since none of us will go in a perfect straight line, constant speed, high speed, until bat empty)

Anonymous

GM's crimes on the EV1 aside, I agree shameless use of hot slutty women can't really hurt : ) It makes female buyers jealous and fools men into thinking the two are somehow connected :)

but seriously, even ignoring that a motorcycle is primarily an instrument of suicide due to its horrible safety characteristics, a genpop motorcycle is not well suited for electrification. they are fine for racing if you use battery swap and also great for drag racing as we have seen but because it has aerodynamic drag as bad as an entire car yet only a small space for the battery it tends to be expensive yet have very short range. especially aggravated by the tendency to go really fast at which point the aero drag drains the battery in minutes. 200km/h cuts the range of 100km/h by about 75%.
a report on user experience with these e bikes would be interesting.

maybe the range limit is not as pronounced as I suspect.
I'll give them some credit for the prices though. 10-14k$ depending on batterypack doesn't seem too bad.

Anonymous

4 Years Ago

Hey Domenick... just saw that you gave me source attribution. My kindest regards to you. I think more Brammo news is on the way, even before September is over. Stay tuned.

@GeorgeS - the Empulse is not "too much of a crotch rocket" for a 61 year old. It will come standard with regular handlebars (the prototype has clip-ons) so the riding posture will be more upright. I'm almost 50 and I've got one on pre-order.

Anonymous

4 Years Ago

I'm like a little kid on Christmas eve waiting for this bike. Electric motorcycles make way more sense than electric cars. The aerodrag is almost half and therefore miles/kwh are twice as good. (5 miles/kwh vs 10 miles/kwh). The other nice thing is you end up w/ a much shorter charge time. This bike will come w/ a level 2 charger. If the charger is 3.3 KW like the Leaf, you are adding miles at twice the rate!!

Is the bike too much of a crotch rocket for someone 61 years old. Yeh probably but that posture keeps the drag down.

Anonymous

4 Years Ago

Brammofan, Domenick

Ever think about starting a Brammo-Empulse site like Jay did for the Leaf?? I think we need a place to go so we can get better insight into the production schedule etc. Brammo seems to be kind of tight lipped w/ news.

EVFTW-Thx for the input.

Solas- thanks for the encouragement, LOL.

Brammofan--nice to hear someone else has one on order. Re bars, we could also get some after market risers to raise the bars just a tad more.

Anonymous

4 Years Ago

@GeorgeS - at the risk of raising the ire of the AOL folks, I'm going to point you to one of the sources where Brammo sometimes 'spills' the information a bit earlier - the Brammo Owners Forum, at brammoforum.com. And of course my own little blog about them at brammofan.com. Personally, I don't think Brammo is being too tight lipped about the production schedule. They have always operated by the philosophy of "under-promise, over-deliver" that they don't want to be pinned down on a definite production date (other than '2011') and run the risk of being a company that continually disappoints the folks that have their bikes on preorder.

Anonymous

4 Years Ago

Not quite the antithesis of Tesla (other than cheaper products) - if they are going IPO soon, their generating cash infusion on hype, which is the same. Motorcycle companies have a far, far rockier road than cars (%) - predicting 6 mil in sales means nothing a few quarters later for this company.

That said, I love the Empulse (um, with or without 4 hotties, I must admit my heart rate is up a bit...). Whatever numbers they have on the Enertia sales, the Empulse will be assuredly better AND ... given a cheaper product, preorders are more likely real compared to the Leaf queue ... where I expect more to bow out once actual cash changes hands.